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No, it does not account for location but so far, I've not encountered any problems with that and if I do, I will just change the appointment or cancel it if is outside of my traveling area with an explanation of course.

I do the majority of scheduling online myself right now. Although, anyone can schedule if they like.

It is a GREAT backup system too. Plus, it remembers everything so the next time I need to make an appointment with "Roy Peters" that is all I need to type in. It will auto remember the rest and fill it in for me. It also sends a confirmation email NOW to the customer for the date, day, and time of our appointment with what we discussed.

24 hours ahead of time, it sends them an email reminder of our appointment the next day. I have asked every single person that I have scheduled or who has scheduled it themselves how they like it. Every single one just ADORES IT! They love it!

Seeing as how I tune so many pianos at Calvin College, it has fast become extremely handy for them and for myself.

People have no idea how much time I spent returning their calls almost every day, or playing phone tag with them and playing email tag with them. Etc. This is a true time saver.

Since I have implemented this new scheduling system, we have virtually, almost, eliminated email contact and most phone calling. But for emergencies.

There are the occasional times where I may have to open up an appointment slot for them when I have a day scheduled off for example and I received an emergency tuning from them; that happened today. But still, it saves me a TON OF TIME making calls, returning calls, and emailing.

Today, they sent me a brief email telling me of the requested date. I opened it up, told them so and then they booked the appointment accordingly and that was that. It auto sends and syncs the scheduling information to my calendar.

On my telephone, I tell people that they can go directly to my website to book the appointment. Many of them do just that.

I chose to list my prices on my website to avoid price shoppers who I am frankly, sick to death of. I haven't had to return price shoppers calls wasting my time since.

Loren DiGiorgi (THANK YOU LOREN!) uses it too and is the one who got me started using it. I've only been using mine for about, oh, a month or so??? Maybe 6 weeks? He's been using the same booking system for a lot longer and gets 5-10 appointments a day. He says that makes any additional driving worth it, not having to return so many calls at night.

By the Way Roy I have this posted on my website too. "Do I live in your service area?

I service pianos in the following areas of Western Michigan: Kent, Montcalm, Muskegon, Ottawa counties, and other cities in the surrounding areas. I localize Grand Rapids and its surrounding areas. While these are most common, I encourage you to contact me and discuss tuning, even if you do not see your county, city, or township listed. If you book a tuning and it is not on a day when I'm in your area, I may contact you to reschedule."

I sent them a suggestion about doing something like that for routing. They said they do not have that feature available at the moment and then suggested that I pick certain dates where I travel NW, SE, SW, NE and post those on the site for people to choose from. Yes.... I told him how stupid I thought that idea was. I said "KISS." Keep it simple stupid.... So, hopefully, they will work on it.

I drive close to 25,000 miles a year. Some of you probably drive more than that in larger cities. I have a certain distance that I will travel and no further or it is no longer worth the drive out there and I won't drive out 30 miles somewhere for just one tuning. Well, I will, if it fills a hole but, I try not to do that. One tuning is better than no tunings... That makes it 1 hour round trip in which time I could have tuned a 2nd piano. So, routing is important to me too.

Right Roy. Having the capabilities as the owner and payer of the website scheduling program, we should have these abilities to limit travel. I don't have the answer. I do know that I do not want one person scheduling me 29 miles west of my home and the next person scheduling me 29 miles east of my home making it a 60 mile trip the opposite direction again. So far, that's not happened but, like I said, I would change it if it did. Maybe Loren has suggestions for that one?

Well Jer, I look at it this way. I make service calls. The nature of my business is that I drive from piano to piano. Sometimes I do go 30 miles in one direction and 30 miles in another.

I look at it this way:

1. When I'm working, it's all about the customer's convenience. When I'm not working, its all about my convenience. So...I go all out when I'm "on the job," and when I'm off the job, the voicemail takes all my calls!

2. I think the added income and business generated by the scheduling system, plus the literal hours of phone time it saves me, outweigh the occasional trips out of my way.

I guess in the end, I'd rather have 1 tuning in the time I could have done two rather than no tunings because I was holding out for two.

Do you guys require a credit card number to be entered at the time of booking? I see Genbook offers that option.

This thread prompted me to search for other online appointment scheduling services. There are many. So far, none of them offer routing. I'm still looking. Full Slate is one that will let you set up locations. So, you can set different locations on different days. And, you can accept or decline an appointment before it gets confirmed. What I've thought of doing is once I have an appointment set up in one part of town, then going in to set the location for that day to that area, so that others would be setting appointments around whoever sets the first one. It wouldn't matter where the first one was.

Some services offer two way calendar syncing, others only export. That is one difference. Right now I use Google calendar, which wirelessly syncs with my Blackberry. Contacts also sync. It doesn't integrate the calendar with the contacts, however. So, contact info isn't linked with the appointment. That's one thing I would like. Then, for those who don't pay at the time of service, I have to go back, look at my calendar, and figure out who to bill. I'm looking for something which would integrate this. It would be nice to have a calendar function for appointments which automatically shows who hasn't paid yet. The new version of Quickbooks has some sort of calendar app. But I think it just shows when you have done various accounting tasks. Maybe it will evolve.

Simplifythis looks good. It does all this, with an invoicing function. If I didn't have Quickbooks already, I would probably use it. The thing is that I've already been using Quickbooks for a long time, and use the Intuit Payment Network to invoice people and accept payments. I also have Paypal buttons on my website. But, I have to manually enter info.

Appointments-Plus comes with a Quickbooks plugin. If someone books online and pays, it will import the info to Quickbooks. That's attractive.

Most of the online appointment services do about the same thing. I'm just trying to figure out which might suit my needs best. I'll probably go this direction in some manner.

I don't capture credit card information at the time of booking. I don't think it's a good business practice. I just let the customer book without requiring anything other than their basic info that I'll need to complete the appointment (address, phone, email, for instance).

Sounds like there are more services now than there were three years ago when I started doing this. At that time, Genbook and Schedulicity were the only two I knew of. The problem with Schedulicity was that (at the time, anyway), you couldn't capture a customer address. It was instead geared toward businesses where the customer travels to the business (tanning salon, etc).

I don't capture a credit card number either. I don't think many people would book. I know that I wouldn't. I checked out some of the other programs too besides Genbook but Genbook seemed to offer more flexibility and more of what I wanted and the price is excellent too I think.

Hey Jerry, did you see the new "Read reviews" button Genbook offers? Go to my site and click the Frequent Questions page to see it in action. Maybe your nephew could add it to your site next time he updates?

I like that Loren! I will have him look into putting that feature into mine too. Thanks for letting me know. I agree with you Lauren about Booking online becoming the latest fad. Many doctors, lawyers, my doctor even, allows me to change my appointment with them online if necessary.

PS I am at the cottage playing with my iPad I should be outside enjoying the weather where I am going next. We had to open the second cottage this weekend. Two weekends ago, we opened the other cottage code is done cleaning it right now I set up here.

We are having a very good time up here. And we'll be getting very very drunk tonight ha ha. My son just walked up behind me and said that but he could be very right. Ha ha

The new iPad has dictation on it. Meaning all I have to do is speak and it types it for me. That is what I was using yesterday when my son walked up behind me and said something about getting drunk yesterday which we did not do. Just FWI. Smile face.

I too, really like the review feature in Genbook. In fact, so far I like everything about Genbook.

I don't capture a credit card number either. I don't think many people would book. I know that I wouldn't. I checked out some of the other programs too besides Genbook but Genbook seemed to offer more flexibility and more of what I wanted and the price is excellent too I think.

I'm with Jerry on this one.As a consumer if one tuner required me to submit CC info just to book an appointment I would simply go with somebody else. (And this is from somebody who buys things with their credit card online all the time). These days people are very aware of the inherent risks in posting any such information online. Some people are somewhat paranoid about putting such information online, especially simply to confirm a booking (even though it won't be charged). And there are those that will never post their credit card info online at all, ever.

I don't capture a credit card number either. I don't think many people would book. I know that I wouldn't. I checked out some of the other programs too besides Genbook but Genbook seemed to offer more flexibility and more of what I wanted and the price is excellent too I think.

I'm with Jerry on this one.As a consumer if one tuner required me to submit CC info just to book an appointment I would simply go with somebody else. (And this is from somebody who buys things with their credit card online all the time). These days people are very aware of the inherent risks in posting any such information online. Some people are somewhat paranoid about putting such information online, especially simply to confirm a booking (even though it won't be charged). And there are those that will never post their credit card info online at all, ever.

Exactly right! I know I wouldn't enter cc info anywhere just to book an appointment. And like you, I buy stuff online all the time. I just don't see the need to capture cc info just to book an appointment.

Another reason I didn't like Schedulicity is, the customer has to create a profile to book an appointment. Again, that would deter me. I'd just go somewhere else. A customer is just wanting to book an appointment, not sign up for anything. I think it's a poor business model to require that.

Whether something is a good or bad business practice depends upon your goals, does it not? If your goal is to get as many people as possible to book appointments, then barriers to such are bad. If your goal is to minimize lost income due to driving places and having no one be home, then it's more beneficial to have people enter a CC as an insurance measure. They are more likely to take the time they have booked seriously. Yes, many people would look elsewhere. The email/text reminder feature would probably help prevent no-shows. But I don't believe there is a right or wrong here. Fortunately, this is a business where most customers are great people, and are responsible as far as payment goes. The fact is, however, that using an online service like this you are not pre-screening people on the phone. Anybody can sign up, and you don't know who they are until you get to their home. I wouldn't make people enter CC info unless I started to have problems, but I can see why some businesses would want it. I just wondered what you guys thought.

Whether something is a good or bad business practice depends upon your goals, does it not? If your goal is to get as many people as possible to book appointments, then barriers to such are bad. If your goal is to minimize lost income due to driving places and having no one be home, then it's more beneficial to have people enter a CC as an insurance measure. They are more likely to take the time they have booked seriously. Yes, many people would look elsewhere. The email/text reminder feature would probably help prevent no-shows. But I don't believe there is a right or wrong here. Fortunately, this is a business where most customers are great people, and are responsible as far as payment goes. The fact is, however, that using an online service like this you are not pre-screening people on the phone. Anybody can sign up, and you don't know who they are until you get to their home. I wouldn't make people enter CC info unless I started to have problems, but I can see why some businesses would want it. I just wondered what you guys thought.

Well, I think the only time I would give a credit card for booking something would be if I was reserving a hotel room or rental car. But that's also because in most instances, that's also how the customer is going to pay for the room or car.

But in our business, suppose someone wants to book me and the plan is to pay with cash or check? A credit card doesn't even enter the picture, so what would be the reason of requiring a credit card to book the appointment?

I will say this; I've never had an online-booked customer not be there for the appointment. They get the reminder 24 hours ahead of time. I've had customers have to cancel or reschedule, but that's just part of the territory.

For me, so far I have only been using Genbook for approximately 6 to 8 weeks. Loren has a lot more experience than I do with Genbook. I have not worried about pre screening in fact, I hadn't even thought about it until now. I do not foresee that as a problem but, like I said, there is always the cancel appointment feature that is available too. No different than cancelling over the phone, right?

If I have any trouble with customers that are trying to schedule out further then I'm traveling that week I will simply just call them back and explain the situation to them. It happens rarely. I am finding more and more of my regular clients prefer to use Genbook nowthan ever before because they discovered ths ease ans use of fit..

I can send my customers a reminder message of my choosing asking for removal of all items off from the piano no dishwasher clanking removing or input of dishes and someone. And I do use This feature often. Plus I can change it at will. For the price of $19.95 a month I find it awfully hard to beat. I can't count the number of hours this evening and returning people's phone calls.

Sounds good. I'll look into it again. I hired someone to answer my phone. But it's alot more expensive than $20/month. She does a good job, and I have customers often comment how much they like her. Still, I think of doing this. I get alot of people who email, and then I have to forward to her, or send them an email. And people call my home phone instead of the business number. So, I'm still responding to calls and emails quite a bit.

There are quite a few of these services out there now. I'm checking them out. Thanks.

Ryan! I disagree that pianos left untuned for years are ok...they are not. Our job should be to KEEP pianos in tune, not drag them up to pitch irregularly, and hope they sound good for a while. If the customer won't schedule once a year, I don't keep them in the 'current' file. Pianos that go flat CAN be damaged by the experience; what happens when you are dragging all those kinks and bends around the bridge up and away from the pins to get it in tune? False beats, and crummy sounds, my friend! Properly; we train the strings, balance the load, and then maintain it with minimal tuning input. Pianos like that are a treat to tune, and WANT to go back in place. They literally jump back into place...because that's where the whole load is comfortable and 'proper'. I really do disagree with you on that score..sorry, my friend! Some older tuners, and piano care books, also talk about bridge damage, soundboard stresses, and (gasp!) structural problems from horsing around with the 30,000lbs. at irregular intervals.....but, I can't honestly tell someone their piano may explode if they fail to tune it. I'd like to.......but.....(sigh)

Phones? Well, I always set an estimated 'next' tuning, and I encourage 6-months for pianos actually being played, and once a year for the ones that only get tapped on Sundays by a little old lady when she's feeling good. Minimum once a year, or you are not taking care of your investment is what I say.

Reminder cards? Yup. That's my basic (although email reminders are getting more frequent)method of keeping in contact with the customers. I send a card, and I expect the customer to have the interest to by-golly call me back. I NEVER call and harass the customer to tune their piano. There's a guy out here who gave me a new client this week when he called and said; 'I need to make a car payment. Can I come and tune your piano tomorrow?'. True story.

My wife is my office manager. We like to tell people that it is the perfect arrangement. I get up in the morning, and she tells me where to go and what to do.